"A slight exaggeration," says Winters.

"Your world sounds terrifying. I'm glad someone's doing something about it. So, how does this work, what do you need from me?"

And so she goes into a standard spiel on what therapy is and what it's for and the constraints on her behavior and the extent to which he will need to be on board with the program to get anywhere. She sounds like she has delivered this in lecture format for forty years, which she has.

"Okay. So, maybe I can describe what I'm hoping to get out of this and then you can assess whether that's something you'll be able to help with?"

She nods.

"Most of the Ardas are much nicer than mine. Aside from Luster, which has absurdly powerful magic, their wars were shorter by around three centuries, their Elven populations are not tampered with en masse, and their human populations are much much smaller. But also, they have access to, and are deploying everywhere, all of the magic the multiverse can offer. Cam's done their cities and their infrastructure. Servants can do most of the agricultural work we have to do by hand, they don't bother with personal security because they're all indestructible, I understand it to be the case that wizardry can do healing as good as any Vala's that a significant fraction of our populace can learn in a year or two.

And we can't have any of that, because they don't trust me with it, and if there's any way at all to change that without just overwriting my head with someone else's personality, I think it is desperately important that I figure out how to do it."

"A course of therapy will not directly establish trusting relationships with them."

"No, I wasn't under that impression. But it could help me figure out what would, and if I can do it, and maybe change some things that are barriers to it happening?"

"Purely social relationships are often improved in this way, but diplomatic ones less so."

"So in your estimation, there's no actual prospects of making things better for my world, no matter what results from us working together?"

"I can't comment on the sum total of prospects, but I would be surprised if my help were to be directly causative."

"Alright. That's the thing I wanted help for, so if that can't be achieved then I don't think I need anything. Thank you for your time and honesty."

"You're quite welcome," she says, and she goes back to where the other subtle artists are clustering to de-tamper people.

And Rúmil goes to meet his alt. Writes a letter in advance, actually, sets a time.

"Hello," he says when the other Rúmil opens the door. "I think it might be a good idea to just start by telling the whole story? This was in 1179, I don't know how much the timelines had diverged by that point but Miriel was dying, Finwë was a mess, and Fëanáro was racing around being miserable, and that's when Bella dropped on us."

And he tells everything from that point forward. "So," he concludes, "if it were me I'd be curious what tampering the Enemy had done. If you're similarly curious I can vouch for Bella's trustworthiness. That's the whole of it, really."

"Around here people don't trust the dimension-jumpers much. The Enemy'd stopped hurting people, you know."

"Yeah, it sounds like they've been in lots of high stakes situations and made varyingly bad decisions. I'm not speaking to the trustworthiness of the dimension-jumpers in general. Bella I vouch for."

"You like her?"

"She's going to do a lovely job ruling this planet we've patched together."

"And so you jumped ships? How'd Finwë feel about that?"

"I am looking after his son. That is the most important thing I can do for him."

"I am curious what tampering the Enemy did, but I do not like or trust the dimension-jumpers. It's like the Valar all over, you know, coming in and seeing people who in their eyes should be different people, immediately punishing and tampering and getting terribly offended and making decisions in a blind panic."

"...I can see how they'd have left that impression, yeah."

"And then wanting us to act all friendly and grateful and corrected and cooperative -"

"It does seem like it might have been better if someone else'd made contact, someone who was less personally invested in the King's character."

"The King's excellent at his job. If I'd been crafted to make Arda worse I would have expected he'd be less so, instead of being equally competent but only instrumentally good. It's hurting our world now, of course, but it didn't hurt us until interdimensional contact happened and the Enemy couldn't have anticipated that."

"Maybe the Enemy likes evil to exist separately from wanting his opponents to be incompetent."

"Maybe."

"Do you talk to the King?"

"Of course."

"Of course," he murmurs. "Did he ask you to talk to me?"

"I asked him about it. He said that if one acted like it was a Vala, only with different preferences about how to perform deference, it was perfectly safe to be around you."

"What a ringing endorsement. He might be biased, you know -"

"Yes, he is. At first he thought they'd deliberately calculated how best to torture him without losing face, but I talked him around because I did not think that was a very reasonable read on them."

"Torture him?"

"Show up, demonstrate astonishing capacity for meddling with people on every level including with their very souls, 'accidentally' use this to set the Enemy loose again - do you have any idea what it was like to learn he was free - announce that the King is fundamentally an error and Should Not Be, kidnap his consort, give him ten years to make sure the world doesn't fall apart when they execute him - they left and he swore not to be too terrified to be functional and then set to dismantling our people, because what else do you do when gods decide you shouldn't exist and give you the courtesy of a few years to offer yourselves up with some semblance of dignity?"

"His consort, did you know -"

"I knew."

He shakes his head. "I do not think they're planning to kill him."

"Just keep the threat close to hand?"

"I imagine they do not conduct themselves like this towards people who aren't horrifyingly evil."

"Most of the thousands of years of mistreatment we have endured has been in the name of making us not evil and therefore deserving of not being mistreated."

"Have the interdimensional visitors actually mistreated you, aside from being appalled at the King?"

"And setting the Enemy free -"

"That was an accident - they probably didn't even set him free, just prompt him to leave - and they're looking for him, it's how they found us -"

"Forgive us for not taking your word for it."

"Are there other respects in which they have mistreated you."

"I don't know, because I don't know what they could have done for our world if they considered us worthy of it, or what this 'untampering' entails, but you can imagine we are reluctant to try it!"

"My understanding is that they are doing everything they can which doesn't make you more dangerous."

"Teaching people to read makes them more dangerous."

"They are also doing some things that make you more dangerous, just not all such things." A long pause. "...do you mind if I share this conversation with Bella?"

"Go ahead."

"Let me know if you end up getting curious about the tampering."

"Can you teach me magic?"

"No. I'm sorry."

"The teleport - no one could ever hurt you again -"

"I might be able to get you a suicide trigger if you want, I can ask."

"Will it help if I beg ."

"No, no, that - that's not the point -"

"With the other jumpers I could at least tell myself they did not understand what they were denying me, what they were denying everyone who'd been in the Enemy's hands -"

"I understand. And magic is too powerful and too flexible and you have been so edited by the Enemy you are a completely different person."

"So if I assent to yet another round of correction, from your Bella -"

"If you were you, no Enemy tampering, of course I'd teach you magic. But she wouldn't want you to feel coerced."

"Then I think you may have boxed yourself in a little. Of course I feel coerced."

"I understand."

And he goes home.

Boots is swearing at her chiplocked computer and a crystal ball inquiring of them why they won't be fucking friends please c'mon WORK.

"Well, I doubt this'll improve your mood, but it'll at least be a different flavor of frustrating?"

Snort. "What've you got?"

He has an eidetic memory necklace; he can send her the whole conversation word-for-word.

"There's an abridged version of the teleport that won't get you out of the world but it'd still involve handing over the alphabet concepts, and we're only about forty percent sure that it'd be prohibitively difficult for anyone but Loki to make progress from those..."

"It's not a good idea. I understand."

"Suicide trigger's easy if he wants it though."

"Can't figure out if the King actually believes 'the Valar, all over again' or just told his people that because it gets them the correct level of suspicious and resentful and protective of him."

"I don't know," she sighs. "It is pretty neatly crafted for that purpose, isn't it."

"Exceptionally so." Sigh.

"- it sounded like it hasn't filtered around that the people most appalled by Midnight have in fact been through Angband?"